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The New York Times is reporting that Kash Patel temporarily halted some FBI cooperation with the RCMP this month after the CBC “reminded its journalists of a longstanding policy not to refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as ‘terrorism’ without attribution to experts.”
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The story is attributed to “multiple officials with knowledge of the event,” who spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity “to describe the sensitive law enforcement dynamics.”
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It dubs Patel’s temporary cooperation halt as an “extraordinary move to punish the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.”
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The source of Patel’s ire, according to The Times, was a memo CBC circulated to reporters and editors across its news platforms ahead of the 9/11 anniversary reminding them not to refer to the attacks that claimed 3,000 lives and changed the modern world as “terrorist attacks.”
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The CBC quickly reversed its policy after the memo was leaked to the media and criticized by Canadian and U.S. officials, including the U.S. ambassador to Canada and Patel.
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In a pointed critique, the FBI director referred to the language policy as a “bastardization of history.”
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“Any agency in Canada that doesn’t publicly reject this bastardization of history, and an insult to the souls lost during our largest terrorist attack in US history will no longer have friend in this FBI… Not to mention our heroes that responded in the aftermath,” he wrote on X late last month.
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The cooperation disruption between the RCMP and the FBI “appears to have been short-lived,” according to The Times, which notes “it was specific to the F.B.I. Other parts of the U.S. government involved in intelligence-sharing continued with their operations. And not every element of cooperation between the F.B.I. and the mounted police was halted.”
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The RCMP said it cannot speak to the intelligence-sharing practices of other law enforcement agencies and instead highlighted five criminal cases where the force did work jointly with the Americans. The most recent was in July when the Mounties and Los Angeles office of the FBI announced the arrests of the leadership of three organized crime networks, including the Bishnoi gang.
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“We value our relationship with our U.S. counterparts, as we work closely to respond to threats to national security and maintain situational awareness of emerging risks. We maintain strong relationships with Canada’s security and intelligence community and work closely with domestic and international partners, including members of the Five Eyes community,” said RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme in statement Friday.
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A spokesman for Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree also didn’t answer specific questions about the impasse with the FBI, saying the Government of Canada values its “close and longstanding law enforcement and security partnerships” with the United States.
